Boy Soldier Quotes

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn't just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. ~ Will Schwalbe

The sun's brightness painted our shadows on the ground. ~ Ishmael Beah

I don't hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hate them once in a while - I admit it - but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them. ~ J.D. Salinger

Ryder Delaney was the one imperfection in my life.He was the bad boy,black sheep,the one your mother always warned you about.He had
only one hard-and-fast rule-Don't Fall In Love ~ Paige Weaver

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

and though he admitted it to no one, especially not his parents when they called from Delhi every weekend, he was crippled with homesickness, missing his parents to the point where tears often filled his eyes, in those first months, without warning. He sought traces of his parents' faces and voices among the people who surrounded and cared for him, but there was absolutely nothing, no one, at Langford to remind him of them. After that first semester he had slipped as best as he could into this world, swimming competitively, calling boys by their last names, always wearing khakis because jeans were not allowed. He learned to live without his mother and father, as everyone else did, shedding his daily dependence on them even though he was still a boy, and even to enjoy it. Still, he refused to forgive them. ~ Anonymous

Arelia looked up at Macon. It's not the house that protects her. It's the boy. I've never seen anything like it. No Caster can come between them. ~ Kami Garcia

Mrs. Todds my English teacher gives an automatic F if anyone ever writes "I woke up and it was all a dream" at the end of a story. She says it violates the deal between reader and writer, that it's a cop-out, it's the Boy Who Cried Wolf. But every single morning we really do wake up and it really was all a dream. ~ David Mitchell

I'll be a good boy, please make me well. I promise you anything, get me out of this hell. Cold turkey has got me on the run. ~ John Lennon

And there's a cop over there."
"What?" the boy said, glancing at the D.C. police officer that stood at the corner of the street, "You think that guys can do a better job protecting you than I can?"
Actually, I thought Liz could have done a better job "protecting" me than he could, but instead I said, "No, I think if you don't leave me alone, I can scream and that cop will arrest you."
Somehow the boy seemed to know it was a joke ... ~ Ally Carter

It seemed to him that the little Manchu had never looked so radiant. She gave him a most charming smile, but her eyes were all for the boy. ~ James Hilton

It was then that Hook bit him.
Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. ~ J.M. Barrie

The boy went to the well every day to meet with Fatima. He told her about his life as a shepherd, about the king, and about the crystal shop. They became friends, and except for the fifteen minutes he spent with her, each day seemed that it would never pass. When he had been at the oasis for almost a month, the leader of the caravan called a meeting of all of the people traveling with him. ~ Paulo Coelho

This going around with boys makes me sick," said Tacy.
"I like Herbert Humphreys," said Tib.
It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so.
"Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert," said Betsy, who liked him too.
"He wears cute clothes," said Tacy, blushing.
Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants. ~ Maud Hart Lovelace

I am a member of the Peace Society because I was a soldier: because I have fought and seen what war is like from personal experience. It was on the battlefield that I pledged myself to the cause of peace. ~ Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

I also knew Dell was a good boy with bad friends. I was one of them, and I worried about leading him astray. But in those early years he made me feel cleaner, somehow; like all the shit we'd gone through wasn't so bad. Like I could deal with it, so long as he was by my side. It had always been the way – but still, I was sure Dell would disappear one day. I had nightmares about what I would do if they released him before me on good behaviour, if he should leave me behind in this fucked up limbo of our youth. Nightmares where if I didn't hold on to him, those long legs would take him away somewhere better... ~ H. Alazhar

I've always liked American actors particularly. Because that was my first impression. I was very enamoured of America when I was a kid because we were surrounded by American soldiers during the war, the accent was very strange to me, it was very exotic and very captivating. ~ Anthony Hopkins

I started out as a box boy. You know, I didn't go to college, and I did well in supermarkets. ~ Ronald Burkle

The poor guy," she said, and this was remorse over her savage speed and rashness as well as pity for this boy, haunting the mouth of an alley with that toy of swift decisions. ~ Saul Bellow

I learned an invaluable lesson from a kid in Argentina when we were playing Buenos Aires in 2002. I came out of the hotel and this 16-year-old-boy asked me to sign his copy of my Six Wives of Henry VIII album. As I was signing it I asked him 'what does a 16 year-old like about this old music?' and he looked at me, quite hurt, and said, 'it might be old to you, Mr Wakeman, but I only heard it for the first time last week. When you hear something for the first time, it's new.' I've never forgotten that. ~ Rick Wakeman

The boy Paco had never known about any of this nor about what all these people would be doing on the next day and on other days to come. He had no idea how they really lived nor how they ended. He did not even realize they ended. He died, as the Spanish phrase has it, full of illusions. He had not had time in his life to lose any of them, nor even, at the end, to complete an act of contrition. He had not even had time to be disappointed in the Garbo picture which disappointed all Madrid for a week. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Who's a good boy," Willa was saying to the dog in a light, silly voice that had the dog panting happily into her face.
"That's right," she cooed, "you are, aren't you? Aren't you a good boy?"
"Well I don't like to brag," Keane said, leaning against the doorjamb. "But I do have my moments. ~ Jill Shalvis

Golden Boy with feet of clay
Let me help you on your way
A proper push will take you far -
But what a clumsy lad you are! ~ Stephen R. Donaldson

CHARLIE: So you can't even see Ivy's point? MATTIE FAE: No. CHARLIE: That Little Charles and Beverly share some kind of ... complication. MATTIE FAE: Honey, you have to be smart to be complicated. CHARLIE: That's our boy. Are you saying our boy isn't smart? MATTIE FAE: Yes, that's what I'm saying. ~ Tracy Letts

Boy and Egg
Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

The first time Ree kissed a man it was not a man, but Gail acting as a man, and as the kissing progressed and Gail acting as a man pushed her backwards onto a blanket of pine needles in shade and slipped her tongue deep into Ree's mouth, Ree found herself sucking on the wiggling tongue of a man in her mind, sucking that plunging tongue of the man in her mind until she tasted morning coffee and cigars and spit leaked from between her lips and down her chin. She opened her eyes then and smiled, and Gail yet acting the man roughed up her breasts with grabs and pinches, kissed her neck, murmuring and Ree said, "Just like that! I want it to be just like that!" There came three seasons of giggling and practice, puckering readily anytime they were alone, each being the man and the woman, each on top and bottom, pushing for it with grunts or receiving it with signs. The first time Ree kissed a boy who was not a girl his lips were soft and timid on hers, dry and unmoving, until finally she had to say it and did, "Tongue, honey, tongue," and the boy she called honey turned away saying, "Yuck! ~ Daniel Woodrell

Every good soldier is trained for the battle field. God is prepping you my darlings. ~ Tonto Dikeh

I think it was this: like most of us, he was carrying a misery in his soul. I don't say it to forgive what he done, [sic] only to say it as true as I can. He was a wrong-minded man, but inside- I swear this is true- he was always that little boy eating that fried-egg sandwich in that dark hallway while the steam pipe dripped water on his head. I don't ask you to excuse him, only to understand that there's people who don't have what others do, and sometimes they get hurtful in their hearts, and they puff themselves up and try all sorts of schemes to level the ground- to get the bricks and joints all plumb, Ray used to say. They take wrong turns, hit dead ends, and sometimes they never make their way back. ~Clare ~ Lee Martin

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favor and esteem for his valor, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir," replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life. ~ Michel De Montaigne

I stared at him, baffled. But at that moment Gideon began to play, and I entirely forgot what I had been going to ask the count. Oh, my god! Maybe it was the punch - but wow! That violin was really sexy! Even the way Gideon raised it and tucked it under his chin! He didn't have to do more than that to carry me away with him. His long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, and a lock of hair fell over his face as he began passing the bow over the strings. The first notes filling the room almost took my breath away, they made such tender, melting music, and suddenly I was close to tears. Until now, violins had been way down on my list of favorite instruments, and I really liked them only for accompanying certain moments in films. But this was just incredibly wonderful - well, all of it was: the bittersweet melody and boy enticing it out of the instrument. All the people in the room listened with bated breath, and Gideon played on, immersed in the music as if there were no one else there.
I didn't notice that I was crying until the count touched my cheek and caught a tear gently with his finger. Then I jumped in alarm.
He was smiling down at me, and I saw a warm glow in his dark brown eyes. "Nothing to be ashamed of," he said quietly. "If it were otherwise, I'd have been very disappointed. ~ Kerstin Gier

Kissing scenes with a boy or a girl, they're awkward. There's nothing sexy about it. There's a lot of people standing around. ~ Jessica Capshaw

Film and TV V.I.P, seeker of the peace, part time chandelier cleaner, a legend in his own time, oppressor of champions, soldier of fortune, world traveller, bonvivant, all round good guy, international lover, casual hero, philosopher, wars fought, bears wrestled, equations solved, virgins enlightened, revolutions quelled, tigers castrated, orgies organised, bars quaffed dry, governments run, test rockets flown, life president of the Liquidarian Society of Great Britain and Ireland. ~ Billy Connolly

The Fall Ball," I told her. "Our Halloween dance."
"Ah.You have a boy to go with?"
"Absolutely.Frankie."
She sighed, and perched on the edge of my bed.Her feet dangled a good six inches off the floor. "I like your Frankie, but he's not going to make pretty bambini with you."
"Nonna!"
"Well,is he?No." She leaned forward. "Now, that boy with the nice voice and bony mother.He might do."
I sighed. "He might do a lot of things, Nonna." I'm not one of them. "Dancing with me is not one of them."
"He liked my pane."
"Yup.He did."
"And you.He likes you."
"Nope.That he does not."
"Hmph.You with all the answers about boys."
That made me smile. "Apparently, I don't even know the right questions."
"Who does? Even kings don't know te right questions.Eh,did you know there is a love story between a king and a queen in your history? Here." She patted the bed. "Get in, cucciola. I will tell you. ~ Melissa Jensen

My outlook on warfare is best illustrated by a cartoon I did some thirty-odd years ago of a soldier in an Italian foxhole reading about the Normandy invasion and observing to his buddy that: The hell this ain't the most important hole in the world . I'm in it. ~ Bill Mauldin